Artificial Intelligence was created to improve the quality of technological developments. However, it is not meant to replace humans but assist them in creating a better environment, elevating the human experience by solving technical problems smarter and faster. Spreading this philosophy is, Lisa Thee, the Data For Good Sector Leader at Launch Consulting, is making AI a human-friendly experience so that people lead a better life.
Launch Consulting navigates world-class organizations through digital transformation. Lisa leads the team by helping people harness data, implement the tech they need in a digital-first world, and enhance the human experience. The company is crafting connected, personalized apex experiences so business leaders by are guided through all stages of transformation.
The Launch to Sky
Before leading Launch Consulting’s Data for Good sector, Lisa had a long and learning-filled career working on different tangents. She started her corporate career in Intel’s Hybrid Cloud Group and retired 18 years later as the Director of Revenue. She co-founded her software start-up, Minor group, which applies AI innovation from the healthcare sector to improve child safety online and in real life. The company’s technology roadmap has been implemented in the iPhone 12 and Chromebooks from Lenovo.
About her journey leading to Launch Consulting, she shares, “To go from employee to entrepreneur was a steep learning curve, especially in an emerging technology field. As a female founder of a social justice-focused tech company in my forties—that adds up to many challenges! I now recognize that experience as the best “street” MBA I could have earned anywhere. However, my first year of business ownership was a deluge of learning how to run a Board of Directors, incorporate a company, and ultimately exit into a larger player in the market.”
Lisa provides global technology and healthcare companies with consulting, software development, and change management solutions for computing and digital safety. Lisa loves working with influential leaders to innovate new ways to de-risk their platforms and improve their customers’ experiences. Her mission is to help the companies do things they have never done before.
Navigators in the Age of Transformation
Launch Consulting provides services in five main work areas: government, healthcare, consumer solutions, high tech, and energy. It is helping various companies map their route to the top in these fields. The processes include everything from developing the back office to executing it on digital platforms.
Launch provides the right researchers, change management processes, designers, and engineers to focus on asking the right questions and building the right solutions. She explains, “AI opens amazing pathways, but it’s a tool, not a solution. Machines are not innovators, explorers, investigators. We have to start with the human experience; what is the business problem we’ve trying to solve? How will this make life better for the people who work with us? There’s a massive market for talented people who care about the journey and understand that working in tech doesn’t mean imposing solutions upon our clients but moving alongside them—creating a frictionless experience so that the team wants to embrace the transformation.”
Lisa, along with her team, is working alongside the world’s leading companies to leverage AI for what the machines do best—math, pattern recognition, processing large volumes of data—so that the humans can do what they do best—intuition, empathy, and creativity. That combination allows her to find pearls of wisdom in oceans of data, pearls that can disrupt human trafficking, reduce bias in healthcare, or curb wildfires. She believes it’s the kind of thing that makes legacies for leaders.
Innovative Work, Innovative People
AI will disrupt and personalize industries that haven’t fully invested in the possibilities yet. Launch is ready to be a part of that change in industries like healthcare, government, and sustainability. These industries sound completely unrelated but are similar in touching each person’s life. Launch calibrates a positive approach to leverage digital transformation to bring the right information to experts at the right time. It uses AI to benefit its clients and systemically show them the growth opportunities.
Speaking about the changes she would like, Lisa says, “Most leaders don’t purposely build a product with vulnerabilities that bad actors can exploit, but we’re all aware of the terrible content out there on the internet. Because of that, I’d love to see safety by design adopted as an industry standard for all companies that host third-party content. I think the managed services industry is uniquely positioned to help global technology companies address trust and safety issues like disinformation, hate speech, child sexual abuse material, and live-streamed terrorism.”
Lisa understands that a managed services company can help leaders, who so often are drowning in the tyranny of the urgent, to address the daily needs of the business while moving forward a more strategic, coordinated approach to ethics, safety, and secure development in the Metaverse age.
Future Missions and Aspirations
Lisa’s long-term goal is to help bring in more women to the data-science field. She has started the process through consulting, coaching, and mentorship. She partners with the non for profit Women in Data to help big companies assess how to get more women into data science roles and ensure representation across the board. Digital transformation must include diverse voices, business owners, and viewpoints on the future of work and product development. Lisa has formulated a plan so that the company is data-driven, hiring the best people from around the world, and delivering excellence and tech solutions.
She further enthusiastically states, “Part of my long-term plan is keynote speaking on “embracing AI for digital transformation.” I’m hoping marginalized groups will see themselves in my story and find a way to create their own leadership career paths. After all, nothing about my upbringing should have gotten me here. I grew up in the Midwest, not in Silicon Valley. I’m not an early adopter. I had to look up what a semiconductor was when I moved to California. I didn’t get an email address until after college. I launched my first company in my forties. If I can do it, anyone can.”
She believes that if anyone is interested in data and is curious about leadership and the will to learn, they can be an entrepreneur. Lisa concludes with a piece of guidance, “If you’re the type who likes to learn before you leap, fellow AI company founder Emily Kennedy and I have partnered with Women in Data to deliver our course the Entrepreneurship Tool Kit, to help more people Find your passion and learn effective tools and strategies to launch your business. Find more information on this course or booking Lisa as a keynote speaker at www.lisathee.com.”
You can also check out the Navigating Forward podcast where Lisa Thee investigates the challenges of being at a crossroads (societal, business, & personal) and finding the opportunities that arise out of disruption. Listen in on Lisa’s future-forward conversations with the brightest luminaries, movers, and shakers. She digs into topics such as elevating the human experience, evolution of business, workforce of the future, and fascinating technologies powering the age of digital transformation. Let’s Navigate Forward together and create what’s next!
